there's a special place in Hell...

OK, that's a bit of hyperbole...

There won't be a litmus test about educational choice in particular or hypocrisy in general. But the Bible is quite clear that if the fruit is this rank, the likelihood of a saving faith seems unlikely. Putting it another way, they (and their friends) need to ask some tough questions.

And if they're heading that way, we know that it's better that a millstone would be tied around their necks as their tossed in the deepest sea.

From William McGurn in the WSJ...

Some hypocrisies are apparently more equal than others. If, for example, you are a politician who preaches "traditional values" and you get caught in a hotel with a woman who is not your wife, the press is going to have a field day...

If, however, you are a pol who piously tells inner-city families that public schools are the answer-- and you do this while safely ensconcing your own kids in some private haven-- the press corps mostly winks....

...the Democrats' passage of an amendment tucked into the omnibus spending bill. Sponsored by Sen. Richard Durbin (D., Ill.), the amendment effectively ended the Opportunity Scholarship Program, a lifeline now used by more than 1,700 schoolchildren to escape one of America's most miserable public school systems....

As strong as the outright opposition may be, perhaps the biggest problem faced by these parents is the Beltway's complicity in a smarmy double standard. Two weeks ago, the Heritage Foundation highlighted this double standard with the release of a new study showing that 38% of the members of Congress are sending or have sent their children to private schools.

That's more than three times the rate for rest of America. For Democrats especially, their choice of a private school for their own families tends to make them opponents of choice for others...And so we have today's Washington, a city where none of the major players making decisions about the D.C. public schools have any skin in the game:

- President Barack Obama. Though the president talks a good game about putting kids first, and could save the Opportunity Scholarships Program with a few words, he remains silent -- even as his daughters attend the exclusive Sidwell Friends School.

- Education Secretary Arne Duncan...

- Mayor Adrian Fenty. The mayor nominally favors [them]...and his lack of leadership was a green light to a Democratic Congress itching to end the program. Though the mayor has promised that his two sons will go to D.C. public schools come fall, right now they too are in a private school.

- Sen. Durbin. In his floor statement defending his killer amendment, Mr. Durbin admitted he chose Catholic schools for his own children. "If I entrusted my own children to [private education], I certainly believe in it." But he went on to say this choice should be there only for Americans who pay for it.

And McGurn finishes with a nice and well-deserved kick in the shorts:

Hmm. Wonder if Mr. Durbin's voting record reveals a consistent respect for not funding things when Americans can't afford them -- or if this fiscal rectitude is reserved only for programs that rile his friends in the teachers unions?